Ninja Gaiden Sigma Interview

1up.com has an interview with Ninja Gaiden Sigma Director, Yohsuke Hayashi, and as I love my action/adventure games, I’m keeping a close eye on NGS as I’ve never played a Ninja Gaiden game before.

Firstly the game is only at 35%, up from 20% when it was shown at TGS ’06, so there’s a lot of work left before it’s scheduled release sometime this summer.

New to the PS3 version is the ability to fire Ryu’s bow and arrow while jumping in the air, the ability to fight battles on water and you can even change Rachel’s hair style and earrings, although the earrings do actually aid you in battle much like Ryu’s armlets, giving you new special abilities. Although Rachel is playable for the first time in the series, she only takes up about 20% of the main game.

For people who like games that are easy on the eye (me), NGS is going to be “the best looking action game on the market” and all the textures are being completely redone. Well, we’ll see how it compares to DMC4 and Heavenly Sword won’t we.

The game will be in 720p and Hayashi-san believes that 1080p is not needed to make a game look its best on the PS3. He’s quite critical of developers that aim for 1080p:

Well, this game is going to support 720p, and that is because we have determined that this is optimal resolution to get the best quality images out of the PS3. There are companies out there that are developing games at 1080p, and the problem is that they’re really pushing the limits of the hardware at that resolution, and I think that if you examine it objectively you will see that in order to get the best balance of performance and image quality then 720p is your only choice. I think that the companies that are making a big deal out of making games at 1080p are either underestimating their ability to get their games to run well at that resolution, or they’re basically just using that as an advertising gimmick. I’m confident that if you want to make the best-looking game you can on PS3, then 720p is your only choice.

I’m not a developer so I can’t agree or disagree with him but the amount of 1080p HDTVs that are on the market in all regions, suggest that 1080p would be wasted at this moment in time. I will be connecting my PS3 up to my 32″ SDTV because I simply can’t afford a HDTV anytime soon.

There is no online or offline multiplayer option in Sigma but it wasn’t omitted from a technical point of view and he has hinted it may be possible some time in the future.

As someone who has heard a lot of positive things about the original Ninja Gaiden, including the difficulty level, I’m very interested in this title. With DMC4, Heavenly Sword and Ninja Gaiden Sigma all set for the PS3 at some point this year, my favourite genre seems to be well catered for. 8)

great interview. i never played ninja gaiden on the xbox. i will probably pick this one up. i love the 3d action games… i just hope it’s not TOO hard, since i heard that complaint a lot about the xbox game.

it’s also encouraging to hear that they have a whole team just dedicated to graphics on the SPUs and that they are seeing improvements literally day by day. and they’re only 35% done!